The Day He Stopped Pretending
by inkanei
Summary: A short glimpse into Jim Kirk's childhood. Warnings: Includes less-than-happy childhood scenes, and neglect.


**Title:** The Day He Stopped Pretending  
**Author:** inkanei  
**Genre:** Gen  
**Rating:** G  
**Length:** ~1700 words  
**Summary:** A glimpse into Jimmy Kirk's early childhood.  
**Notes:** Spoilers for Star Trek XI. Many thanks to gone_ashore (at LJ) who graciously beta'd this for me. She made a world of difference! All remaining mistakes are mine.  
**Later Note:** I went back in to edit a couple errors that still managed to sneak by me. Also, I changed the bit about Jimmy sitting in the car after a very helpful reader pointed out that the car didn't have a back seat. Fixed! lol

Jimmy had never really fit in. This fact would probably surprise anyone who'd ever known him, of course.

He was a good kid. Decent grades, decent behavior. True, he liked to joke around with his friends, and definitely had a bit of a mischievous streak, but he was never much of a troublemaker. In fact, he didn't seem to stand out in any way. He went to school, hung out with friends, did his assignments, and generally got along with everyone. Just your average 11-year-old, really.

Then his brother left, and things changed. If asked, his teachers would have said that he'd simply fallen in with the wrong crowd. After all, Jimmy never did know his father, and his mother seemed to be off-world more often than not. Frank, bless him, never really stood a chance, did he? Everyone knew that boys rebelled against authority at a certain age.

Except there was more to Jimmy than what everyone else saw. Even when he was younger, he was never an average kid. It was a façade. Jimmy understood even then that fitting in meant joking, hanging out, getting decent grades, and doing homework like all the other kids.

What no one else knew was that Jimmy had quite a way with computers. Jimmy had been "playing" with computers since before he could talk. In fact, it had been his mother's favorite way to keep him occupied as a young child. She got him his own little PADD and downloaded a couple of "learning games" on it, and was happy to let him sit for hours with it. It kept him quiet.

It didn't take long for Jimmy to learn his way around a PADD and begin a series of experiments. At first, he'd just wanted more games. Then he figured out that the PADD was nothing more than an interface for the computer terminal in his mother's room. Before long Jimmy could use his PADD to gain access to the terminal without ever setting foot in Momma's room (it was off limits, after all).

It wasn't that he was trying to be bad; he was just curious. One thing that nobody seemed to understand about Jimmy was that he absolutely hungered for knowledge. He knew he was different. He knew other kids his age were content to have little bits of knowledge spoon-fed to them a few hours a day in class, then run out and play ball in the dusty field behind the old Holoplex until dinner.

Jimmy wasn't content, though. Sometimes he felt like he needed _more_, like he needed air to breathe. When he'd discovered the Net he'd been in heaven, for a while, at least. But then he'd realized that some of the best knowledge was kept locked up.

But then, Jimmy had always loved puzzles.

Jimmy was eight when he figured out how hacking worked. By the time he was eleven, only military and government sites still managed to keep him out. At that age, he was already taking college courses through Iowa State's distance education program under an assumed name.

So he'd come home from school each day and do his homework, because Jimmy felt the need to fit in with the other kids, even if it was only , he'd log in and work through his computer engineering assignments, or Orion verb conjugations, or whatever happened to interest him at the moment.

On the day his brother left, though, Jimmy decided he no longer wanted to pretend.

After Sam left, Jimmy realized that he had been living in sort of a bubble. Sure, he'd known that his stepdad was a bit of an ass, but he'd kept his nose to his PADD and let his big brother deal with it. (Not that he could stop him; it seemed like the injustices his stepdad dealt out were all Sam ever thought or talked about.) For years Jimmy didn't really bother himself with it. Frank acted like he owned the place, but as long as he let Jimmy on the computer, who cared? True, Frank had taken possession of his father's collectibles, but Jimmy had never even known his dad, so what difference did it make? It wasn't as if he felt any closer to a man he'd never met just by looking at his damn coin collection.

Jimmy's dad had been a collector of all sorts of things. He'd been one of those people who wasn't content just to _study_ science all day – he had to bring it home with him. Ancient coins, old paper books, rock specimens, data cards on every imaginable subject, an antique car…

Jimmy had tried. He went out to the barn late one night, took the tarp off the car, and crawled into the seat. He sat there for a good ten minutes trying to imagine what it would've been like if his father had been behind the wheel. He tried to imagine seeing his profile there in the dark, and his mom seated next to him. She would've been wearing a nice summer dress, he decided, instead of her standard Starfleet uniform. He and Sam would've been sitting right between them. Maybe they would've played a little too loudly and their dad would've told them to settle down. Maybe they would've gone for a ride one afternoon out to McCook Lake just across the state line for a picnic, where his dad would've rolled around on the grass, wrestling with his sons while his mother looked on fondly.

Maybe. But Jimmy hadn't been able to believe it, no matter how hard he tried. His mother didn't wear dresses, his brother didn't really play with him, and no matter how long he'd sat in the back of that car, he couldn't imagine _what_ his father would or wouldn't do.

So Jimmy had never really cared much about his father's possessions. He let Sam squawk about it, and when he wasn't immersed in other things, he tried to be sympathetic and agree in all the right places, but his heart just wasn't in it.

The day Sam had left, though, his bubble had popped. He'd never really asked his brother for much of anything, not that he could remember. Not until that day, when he'd literally begged his big brother not to leave.

Dad? Well, he'd always been gone. Mother's presence had been sporadic, and he'd gotten used to that. Frank was always around, but he didn't count because he wasn't really family, and he never seemed to have much use for Jimmy anyway. Jimmy understood that his place in Frank's heart was roughly equivalent to that of one of his mother's old flowerpots. Long as he didn't get in the way, leak, or cause any problems, he was just fine where he was. Make a fuss, though, and he'd be chucked out the window with the rest of the crap Frank didn't need.

Sam, though – Sam was his brother. Jimmy didn't know how else to describe him. They'd never exactly been friends. They sure as hell had never been confidants. But whenever Jimmy got sick, it was Sam who made sure he got the right cold medicine. And when his nose was stuffy, it was Sam who'd get up and jab him in the middle of the night so he'd roll over and stop snoring. It was Sam who made sure he had his lunch every day, and who always asked him if he'd done his homework. Of course, Sam had been referring to the his normal school work - he had no idea about the advance courses - but the thought was there.

Jimmy probably should've seen it coming. Long before he actually left, the majority of Sam's rants about Frank had ended with, "I should just leave and never come back!" or some variation of it. But it was never something Jimmy took seriously. A lot of words got thrown around the house. Sam would holler about wanting to leave, and Frank would shout back about how happy that would make him. Sometimes it was like a mini war zone, with feet stomping, doors slamming, and ugly words being hurled all over as if they could break the windows all by themselves. It wasn't exactly a pleasant atmosphere, but a familiar one that Jimmy had learned to tune out, for the most part.

When Sam actually gathered up his things and walked out, it was as if one of the shells had fallen a little too close to his bunker. There was an eerie silence and Jimmy clamped onto his brother's arm and begged him not to go. He didn't try to make any promises, of course, because he had nothing to offer and no way to change anything, but he looked Sam straight in the eye and begged him, "Please, Sam. Please don't go."

It had never before occurred to him that Sam might not be there one day.

Then his bubble burst, and the anger rose up, hot and desperate. It was if he'd suddenly woken up from a bad dream only to realize that it wasn't a dream at all. He felt like his mind was going lightspeed in every direction, and his heart raced to catch up while his limbs shook and tried to figure out why he wasn't even moving. Then he saw the car keys and…

It wasn't even about the car. Not really. Yeah, Frank wanted to sell it. That may have driven Sam up the wall, but it didn't bother Jimmy as much. The stupid damn car had never done anything for him. Neither had his father, for that matter. So when he took the keys and went on his little joy ride towards the quarry, it wasn't because of some sense of poetic justice. It wasn't because Frank was an ass, and didn't deserve a nice antique car.

It was because with his heart pounding, and the blood rushing in his ears, it seemed like the right thing to do. He was done pretending to fit in. He took the keys, jammed them in the ignition, and raced off without a thought in his head except, "Damn, this is _fast_."


End file.
